


Reverse of Mobius

by revise_leviathan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen, egao dammit, post-episode 50
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:38:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3666141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revise_leviathan/pseuds/revise_leviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't, or don't want to? After a brutal loss to Reiji, Yuya visits Shun and Serena in the infirmary for the conversation he kept meaning to have, and gets a lesson in his own life philosophy while he's at it.</p>
<p>Response to the Arc-V 30 Day Challenge on Tumblr, Day 2: Smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverse of Mobius

**Author's Note:**

> I've been intending to write a longer fic with a different setting for Shun and Yuya's eventual plot talk that they need to have in canon or I'm going to explode, but this one just came to me for this prompt so it's going first. Obviously it assumes that Yuya loses hard to Reiji and that Shun and Serena are missing from the duel audience because they're together wherever Shun's getting un-wrecked, so yeah. Also surname basis for Yuya the entire fic because I'm piggybacking on Shun, doot doot--

“Does it hurt any less?”

The infirmary door slides open and clicks closed, and Shun and Serena glance over – briefly, calculating, in that way of soldiers – to see red and green hair hiding a face, goggles up high as if they’re eyes. Their gazes dart to each other for a moment, too, bitter narrow yellows to wary round greens. _Lost to Akaba_ , their expressions both say. Neither is surprised. There’s having good cards, then there’s _skill_ …and then there’s both.

“I’m fine,” is Shun’s taciturn response. He doesn’t think Sakaki meant just one thing. He doesn’t either. Sakaki inclines his head a little further before he steps away from the door, bright oranges and reds somehow dimmed to nothing by this sudden despair despite the bright white lights trickling in through the broad windows of LDS. Shun’s seen it before, on the same face. It’s not any easier the second time around. Sakaki doesn’t look up until he’s taken a chair and sat on it backwards – _forcing quirkiness to seem okay, are we_ – and in that moment, Shun can finally see him as a soldier. There’s a deadness to his eyes like Yuto picked up after their first tag with Resistance members being cut down around them, and though it hasn’t taken hold quite yet, it’s only a matter of time.

“You wanted to talk to me, right? Before we were interrupted.”

It’s a question that could have come from either of them, but in this case it’s Sakaki’s. He’s steadfastly not looking at Serena, as if that might make him forget that his friend is missing, like he can smooth it over with a change of topic and the right words. But he doesn’t stop there; explanations spill out of him, skittering across each other in _fear_ and uncertainty, eyes darting back to Shun every few seconds as if to reassure himself he’s not going to lunge and attack.

“My friend – Hochun Mieru, the other girl from earlier – she, ah, she looked at me in her crystal ball the last time I…I turned.”

Serena looks concerned, but Shun doesn’t. Even with only the briefest of glimpses over Sakaki’s duels in the tournament, small observations of his naïveté in dealing with Yuto and Shiun’in Sora, he knows that the brutal beatdown the boy had dealt out in the second round wasn’t natural, and that was without the glowing red eyes. Serena seems to settle back to match Shun’s neutrality in response, and saved from any interruption, Sakaki blurts the last words like they’ll save him from judgement.

“Two souls. There’s two souls in me, Kurosaki, and one of them is…”

He breaks off with a cry of alarm as Shun moves sharply, gripping his shoulders like he’ll never release them, because this is all he needed to know, _he’s there, somewhere_. His last comrade isn’t lost yet, until Sakaki is.

“Yuto’s inside you?”

Too startled to speak, Sakaki only nods, and Shun breathes and releases him, one hand pulling up towards his ribs in what’s becoming too much of a habit for his liking. Sakaki’s eyes shift rounder when he sees, and like clockwork, he reaches forward to try and ease him back down onto the sterile, stony hospital bed before Serena can even make a move.

“If you don’t allow yourself to recover, you’ll only need more people helping you,” she instead reminds him, arms crossed and eyes closed in frustration as Shun shunts Sakaki away impatiently to do it himself. As if she needs to remind him that he should have been dead ten times that day.

“There’s no time to recover when we’re at war.”

Silence falls. It’s not an untrue comment, but Serena and Sakaki both take a moment to digest it; she was the enemy and he’s new blood. Nothingness stretches into a minute, two minutes, before there’s a grating noise and it’s Sakaki, forcing himself to laugh even as he’s curling up in that chair, face cast in shadow.

“I…I can’t…Yuto wants me to make everyone _smile_ , but how do I…?”

Red eyes rising over his knees, Sakaki looks to Shun. “I’ve never seen you do it.”

Serena looks like she’s torn between laughing and crying as Shun’s face turns incredulous. He was never this naïve, he’s sure.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything to smile about.”

Serena snorts loudly, blue ponytail bobbing with her movement. “Last smile I saw was from that Academia scumbag when he hurled you down the stairs. A smile doesn’t always mean the same thing.”

His eyes are still on them, round as ever. “Well, when I’m sad, I smile too. See?” He bares his teeth, and it’s crushing to see a smile so unlike a smile. “I think Yuto would want me to as well.”

“He wouldn’t want you to wear a mask for everyone’s benefit but your own.”

Shun’s interruption is so precise and immediate that Serena and Sakaki both start, and Sakaki shrinks again, like he’s afraid of upsetting someone, or betraying the person who trusted him with his last wish.

“I don’t--”

“Come on,” Serena says, and it’s like a challenge just in the _way_ she says it. “ _This_ is a smile.” It settles on her naturally, and Sakaki seems to wilt further at the sight of it. Another reminder of his loss, this girl in Hiiragi Yuzu’s clothes and face, but Shun’s reminded of his every time he looks at Sakaki. “Things might be bad, but I learnt my true allegiance today, and ripped away Academia’s chance to put out the last light of the Xyz Dimension. Far as I’m concerned, that’s a good day.”

Sakaki’s head comes up again, and the smile’s a little less of a mockery. “What about you, Kurosaki?”

Serena looks at him expectantly too, and he’d really like to sink into the sheets right now and away from all this, but he can’t, and with Sakaki - _not Yuto_ , he has to remind himself – looking at him like that, he doesn’t think he could anyway.

“…I’m alive. Don’t expect me to smile about it.”

“Why not?” Serena asks, shrugging her shoulders. “You could’ve died right there at the bottom of the stairs. Now you’ve got something ahead of you. Someone I’m guessing you care about very much is still here. In times like this, what more is there to smile about?”

Shun doesn’t respond, but merely looks away. He doesn’t see Sakaki’s expression fall into pity.

“…How long has it been?”

No response, for a few icy seconds.

“I don’t remember.”

The words sit heavily on them, and Sakaki especially seems to be curling up again, but he pops back when Serena leans in and there’s a small sound of alarm from Shun.

“Remembering how to do it now?”

“Get off--!”

She’s squishing up one of his cheeks into half a smile as he tries to bat her away. Shell-shocked as he is, Sakaki can’t help but laugh. They both turn at the sound, and behind steel yellow and the shadow of the green wing over his face, something stirs within Shun.

“…Ah, see, you _can_ do it!” Serena says triumphantly, like the tiny curl of Shun’s mouth is some kind of momentous achievement. Sakaki grins cheerily as well, the lingering air of moroseness from his loss apparently gone for the moment.

“…You’re like _him_ , before the war.”

Sakaki doesn’t need to ask who Shun’s murmur refers to, and by this point, Serena chooses not to. The cheesy, ear-to-ear spread shrinks to a more honest, serious smile, and Sakaki unfurls like a flower suddenly finding light, one hand extended.

“Then I’ll promise you, like he would. _What_ he would. I’ll bring back your true smile, whatever it takes.”

Shun regards the outstretched hand for a brief moment. It’s a hopelessly naïve wish to make, but in that one second, the death in Sakaki’s eyes lifts, and it makes Shun wonder if, for once, he can rely on a promise.

_I’ll be beside you. Always._

Well, technically, he still was…

He takes the hand, and Serena’s smile is brief, but genuine.

“Hope you like a challenge, then…”

Sakaki’s face doesn’t falter. Of course not. Yuto’s never did either.

“Consider this my word, Kurosaki Shun. I won’t fall until I see you and Yuto and Ruri together, smiling again.”

_Naïve, naïve._ But maybe Shun could use a little naïve in his life.

It was the reason he was still breathing, after all.


End file.
